Enewsletter

Notes
from Vegan Outreach

New
Studies on Diet and Cancer

Vegan Outreach’s
President, Jack Norris, RD, has added new posts
to his blog,
including “Vegetarians
Have a Lower Cancer Rate than Regular Meat Eaters”:
“[C]an we now say that vegetarians have
a lower rate of cancer than meat eaters? Well,
fish eaters are meat eaters, so that might be
kind of hard. We could say that vegetarians
have a lower rate of cancer than chicken eaters.”

Notes
from All Over

The
Mainstream Media’s Version of Even If You Like Meat

Somewhere
in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined
pen, packed in so tightly with other swine
that their curly tails have been chopped off
so they won’t bite one another. To prevent
him from getting sick in such close quarters,
he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced
by the pig and his thousands of pen mates
on the factory farm where they live goes into
manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities
with air pollution and a stomach-churning
stench. He’s fed on American corn that was
grown with the help of government subsidies
and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer.
When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months
of age, he’ll become sausage or bacon that
will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction
to meat that has contributed to an obesity
epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds
of the population. And when the rains come,
the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much
corn from the ground will be washed into the
Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of
Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles
and miles around. That’s the state of your
bacon – circa 2009.

And under a half-page
picture similar to this one, the caption reads,
“On a factory farm, 10,000 or more swine
are kept in tight conditions – torture
for the animals and risky for us.” Full
article.

Decline in Number of Animals Slaughtered

The USDA’s recent
report (PDF)
shows declines across the board, including,
“Over the first half of 2009, the number
of broilers slaughtered was 4.2 billion, a decline
of 6.2 percent from the same period in 2008.”

Notes from Our Members

We leafleted
Melbourne University as part of prospective student day,
and reached 800 19 year olds. Mario Sos had this exchange:
Dude: “No
thanks, I love my meat.”
Mario: “Then
you’ll like this, there’s plenty of pictures
of meat in it.”
Dude: (laughs)
“Good one.” (takes a booklet)—Roy E. Taylor in Australia, 8/18/09

It has
been a great week leafleting with
Theo Summer. Students at Fresno City College
were AMAZINGLY receptive. Dozens were reading
them while they walked, or they sat down to
read. Edison High School was also full of receptive
and friendly kids. Even though it’s 103
degrees in Fresno, it feels great to be received
well.
Earlier, at Diablo
Valley College and Los Medanos College, people
at both schools remembered getting leaflets
previously, and one young woman exclaimed to
her friend, “See! This is why I don’t
eat meat!”—Brian Grupe, 8/20/09

The Ottawa
Animal Defense League handed out
Vegan Outreach brochures outside screenings
of the movie Food, Inc. this past weekend.
Over three days and about 40 minutes total,
we handed out over 600 brochures. It was a very
successful event and we hope many minds were
changed as a result. —Jason Halvorson, 8/20/09

Had good
interactions while leafleting
in Chicago today, including a man who said he
and his wife had gone veg about a month ago
after reading the Why Veg? booklet.—Matt McEwen, 8/18/09

Lynn
Halpern, Lisa Shapiro, and I handed
out over 900 booklets at the Freshman Welcome,
so we reached about 1/5 of the incoming class
at Colorado University, Boulder. A lot of people
sat around reading them – always nice to see.
One young guy came back and recommended that
we hand the literature out near the brat stand,
and said reading the Compassionate Choices
was making him not want to eat his brat. I told
him about vegetarian
brats and showed him the
Tofurky brand in the back of the booklet. —Barbara Bear, 8/23/09

Posted to the Adopt
a College email group:Sean Hollick, Joe Espinosa,
Tom Schlieske (right), and I handed out 3,000 copies of
Even If You Like Meat, 25 Guides,
and 2 A
Meaningful Life booklets at Illinois State.
It was a long day, waking up at 4:00 am and returning
home around 9:30 pm, but that is par for the course
when dealing with the incredibly dedicated Mr.
Espinosa (above).
Cheers to the
new semester! I’m thrilled to take part in this
meaningful, effective work with all of you,
arguably the best crew of grassroots activists
alive! And once again, thanks so much to the
donors
on this list, who are going to make another hugely
successful semester of this absolutely vital
outreach possible.—Jon Camp, 8/18/09

Vegan
Outreach is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
dedicated to reducing the suffering of
farmed animals by promoting informed,
ethical eating.